


Like Water Bleeding Fire

by Adel Mortescryche (Mortescryche)



Series: YOI Fantasy Week and Stories Branching Off From It [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mermaids, Attempt at Humor, BAMF Katsuki Yuuri, Canon-Typical Romance, Even when they're mermaids, Eventual Communication, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, MerMay 2018, Mermaids, Miscommunication, Music, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pirates, Romance, Singing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, VictUuri, these boys are hopeless
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 04:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortescryche/pseuds/Adel%20Mortescryche
Summary: There he’d been, innocently picking his way through the new ship that had been sinking to the bottom of the sea bed, when he’d heard the most angelic voice reverberating through the water. It had distracted Yuuri from his own singing, and had drawn him upwards in a stupor, barely avoiding the denser wood and bodies sinking deeper. And when he finally reached the surface, half-lit by the pale light of the Tide Mother, it was to find his idol seated high on a rock formation sticking out of the water.He’d drifted closer and closer, agape, not registering that he’d automatically started humming along with Victor’s words until the older merman had broken off with a start.Their eyes had met for a split second before Yuuri dived away with a shriek, tail powerfully propelling him downwards faster than even Victor’s inherited deep sea strength could catch up to.---It's hard enough, falling in love with your idol without somehow being roped intopiracy, of all things. Yuuri always has to have it tough, doesn't he.





	Like Water Bleeding Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lemon_Dropz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemon_Dropz/gifts).



> No trigger/content warnings apply to this chapter outside of what applies to canon.
> 
> Also crossposted to Tumblr [here](https://adelmortescryche.tumblr.com/post/167560066774/yoi-fantasy-week-day-four).

It’s a bit like a hurricane, really. Or, at least, what hurricanes look like when you’re dumb enough to get stuck in them while high up on the surface. Which Yuuri has done one too many times, but that’s just him - he’d been called a thrill chaser of the worst kind, back when he’d been at the University of Music in Atlantica. He’d given up singing years ago, resigning himself to the fact that he would never be able to sing the way Victor did, and drifting for a few years before getting into the business of salvage because it was easy. And, honestly, because it was easy to keep singing when there was no one around to hear him.

That’s why it’s like a hurricane. There he’d been, innocently picking his way through the new ship that had been sinking to the bottom of the sea bed, when he’d heard the most angelic voice reverberating through the water. It had distracted Yuuri from his own singing, and had drawn him upwards in a stupor, barely avoiding the denser wood and bodies sinking deeper. And when he finally reached the surface, half-lit by the pale light of the Tide Mother, it was to find his idol seated high on a rock formation sticking out of the water.

He’d drifted closer and closer, agape, not registering that he’d automatically started humming along with Victor’s words until the older merman had broken off with a start.

Their eyes had met for a split second before Yuuri dived away with a shriek, tail powerfully propelling him downwards faster than even Victor’s inherited deep sea strength could catch up to.

For all that Yuuri had given up his possible career as a royal guard to take up singing instead, it was times like this that he was grateful to have done the training at all. The muscle power it had left him with meant he could move a whole lot faster than most anyone could when he wanted to.

*

Phichit, obviously, couldn’t stop laughing, once Yuuri actually convinced himself to fess up. Yuuri sighed, and made himself sit down on one of the many colorful stools that were a part of his friend’s home. Yuuri couldn’t understand how Phichit enjoyed living in such a colorful apartment complex, but Phichit had always explained it away as being a ‘family’ thing. Which, yes, nearly every coral reef merperson Yuuri had met tended to be as loud as his friend. But-

“Again, tell me again. You _swum away_?!” Phichit choked out, dissolving into chortles again at Yuuri’s long-suffering expression.

“I- the voice was beautiful, okay, but I wasn’t expecting to see-see-” Yuuri’s retort faded into a drawn out groan, remembering just how glorious Victor had looked up on the surface, his tail and the scales on his skin as ethereal as they’d looked in every poster and ad Yuuri had ever seen him in. Being part Arctic and part Deep Sea meant his scales ran the gamut between icy blue to dark blue and black; Yuuri even had some rare posters where he could see the surreal glowing streaks running through his tail. And that combined with his long, silvery hair-

Phichit _cackled_ , and Yuuri came back to himself with a wince

“You’re so gone on him, bro. It’s adorable. I always knew you were gone on him, but-”

“ _Phichit-kun._ ”

“Okay, okay, sorry. But you looked so flustere- so! How’d he look! You said you’d been singing too, did he like what he heard?”

Yuuri cringed, and glanced away. His singing was no good, Victor had probably stopped because of how ugly Yuuri’s humming had made his song sound.

He yelped right after, when Phichit bopped him on the head.

“You,” his friend said with a glower, “are silly. And ridiculous. And think too much. Your voice is _great,_ Yuuri, stop putting yourself down.”

Yuuri gave him a smile to placate him, and changed the subject. From the way Phichit rolled his eyes, he could recognize the diversionary tactic from a mile away, but he let it slide.

*

The next time was just as bad, honestly. It didn’t hit him with the same force as a hurricane on the surface, but that was only because, the second time around? Victor was the one who snuck up on _him_.

Yuuri’d been minding his own business. Again. And had been busy at work with salvage. _Again_. Nothing that should have warranted Victor Nikiforov appearing out of the depths to catch his hands and stare up soulfully into his eyes.

“You,” said Victor Nikiforov, “Have the voice of an _angel_.”

  _Haha, no_ , said inner Yuuri.  _This can’t be happening to me. I quit._

  _Omigod he’s so beautiful_ , said inner Yuuri’s understudy, and made a garbled sound as he fainted in awe.

Yuuri, for his part, stared up at Victor Nikiforov with his eyes huge in his head, wondering if it would be too much of a social faux-pas to faint in awe like inner Yuuri’s understudy.

_Not at all,_ cackled inner Phichit. _I mean, look at those lean muscled arms and that broad chest. Faint away, fair Yuuri-_ urk.

“That- can’t be true. If you’re saying I have the voice of an angel, what does that make you?” Yuuri asked faintly, shutting out his inner Phichit, and watching with wide eyes as Victor flushed a pretty, pale pink in a wide swath right across his face, catching his nose and ears too.

It was possibly the most adorable thing Yuuri had ever seen, and he had no idea how to react.

“Y-Y _uuri_ ,” he whined, and Yuuri gaped a little more.

“You know my name. How do you know my name?!”

Victor stared back at him, visibly confused.

“Of course I know your name. We met at the post-annuals at the University of Atlantica; you’d been in your final year, and I’d been called in as a judge? We danced and sang a duet together in the after party, don’t you remember?”

No, Yuuri does not remember. Yuuri is currently in the middle of an imminent breakdown, inner Yuuri and his understudies gibbering helplessly. It takes Victor’s hands reaching up to tighten on his shoulders to calm him down enough to actually look up and pay attention to Victor again.

Victor looked a little confused, but also very serious, clinically observing the expression on Yuuri’s face.

“Your voice,” he repeated, “is beautiful by itself. I didn’t lie when I said it is the voice of an angel. But what I love more is to sing along with you, because we sound like something new and unheard of together.”

And proceeded to ignore any of Yuuri’s protests to the statement, instead tugging him back upwards to the little island Yuuri had first seen him on. The water was turbulent up above, so much more violent when Yuuri could feel it drumming up against the rocks and against his skin. There was water dropping down from above, returning to the ocean beneath, and Yuuri found himself sitting and clinging to Victor, wide eyed, because this ‘storm’, by the human name, was absolutely breathtaking.

And then Victor opened his mouth, and wordlessly threw his voice upwards to the sky, the strength of his lungs enough to pour out the kind of music Yuuri had heard from the ancestor-elders, bleeding their songs through the depths for years on end, singing to each other and to anyone else who cared to listen. It’s almost unnerving, to hear that depth of sound coming from another merperson, but Yuuri is more humbled than disturbed, because the song is hauntingly surreal, speaking to that part of him he knows is endemic to anyone from the depths of the undersea kingdom.

Victor had never been recorded singing like this before. But it’s what had drawn Yuuri up through the remains of a sinking ship, called forth on sheer instinct. It’s beautiful, and Yuuri can only cling to him, hesitantly lending his own voice to the harmony, smiling in spite of himself when Victor’s arms tightened around him.

“I always sing, up in the storms,” Victor said easily, later, when they were tired of singing. Still lounging on the rocks, arms tight around one another.

“Human storms,” Yuuri murmured, peering outwards.

The ocean had calmed, as had the skies, the Tide Mother’s light coming down in pale rays from between the misty clouds above. Yuuri knew bits and pieces of the world above, had spoken to old fishermen and women who wouldn’t carry tales to their children, only wanting to share themselves with the depths the way Yuuri and his family shared themselves with the land, at times. But he had never stayed up for so long on the open waves, even in the dark of the human night. The emptiness is almost as humbling as sound of Victor’s song.

“Human storms,” Victor agreed, his lips curling up into a smile where they were pressed against Yuuri’s temple.

“You asked me to come away on an adventure with you when we sang together, Yuuri. I’ve been chasing adventures ever since, because you disappeared and I couldn’t find you.”

Yuuri flushed red, and he hid his face in Victor’s throat. The fact that Victor hadn’t let go of him once, not since they’d levered themselves up onto the rocks, told him that Victor wasn’t even exaggerating the claim to have been chasing him. What he can’t understand is how Victor feels so strongly about that time spent together - it’s been so long since Yuuri had been in the university, too.

  _Ah, but you’ve been chasing Victor just as long, haven’t you?_ Asked his inner Phichit, and Yuuri sighed, his fingers delicately slipping down Victor’s flanks to come to a rest against his hips.

“I don’t have any adventures to take you on,” he confessed in an undertone. “I’m just a salvager. Who sings in his spare time. There’s nothing interesting about me. Not like you. You’re the best artist in our generation, the royal family loves your voice, you sing to the _skies_ , like the ancestor-elders sing to the depths. Why would you want to chase me?”

Victor was silent for a moment, long enough that Yuuri began to pull away, but Victor tugged him closer when he tried.

“…isn’t it enough that I wanted to chase you anyway? I think you sing beautifully. And I think I want to know you. I don’t need to be promised adventures, but I feel like we’ll have them if we’re there to chase them together.”

Yuuri peered up at him, bemused. Because Victor looked so damn earnest, it didn’t feel fair to crush that purity of feeling. He’s about to crush it anyway, because honestly, people like Victor didn’t belong with people like him, when Victor gave a sudden gasp, snatching his arms away from Yuuri’s person and dragging himself up higher on the rocks.

“What? What is it?” Yuuri called out at him, alarmed.

“A ship!” Victor called back, sounding delighted. “They’re coming this way, maybe they heard us singing!”

“That isn’t exactly a good thing- what if they decide to attack?” Yuuri shot back, and Victor _laughed_.

“They won’t. I’ve drawn ships to me before. The sailors are more likely to throw themselves overboard or jump into their tiny boats to get away than they are to attack me.”

Yuuri stared up at him, incredulous. The wind was building again and Victor’s hair, nearly dry after how long they’d spent up on the rocks, was blowing up around him like something out of a dream, flowing as lightly as it had when they’d been in the depths. When he looked back down at Yuuri, face lit up in glee, Yuuri had to laugh, and pull himself up higher as well. He got an arm around his waist for his troubles, and pressed closer to the other man to whisper into his ear.

“What do you say we sing some more, then?” He said, feeling mischievous, like something elemental had lit up in his veins. “I bet you we could draw them closer. Your voice definitely could.”

Victor shivered against him, his lips lifting up into a smile that glinted with sharp teeth.

“It could, couldn’t it. Yes, Yuuri, _yes._ ”

*

“A ship,” the Queen said, staring at them both with a blank expression on his face.

Yuuri shuffled in place, wondering if he should back off slowly. He’d known Otabek since he’d still been a prince, but that deadpan expression on his face had only grown more iron-clad with age. Victor was still beaming at their Queen, the expression barely making a dent in his good humor.

“Yes! A large one, too, we could bring down the treasure they had on board. My Yuuri put the anchor down by our little island; it won’t be going anywhere any time soon. Yuuri already knows his way around salvage, and-”

“A ship. A human ship, that isn’t a wreck, and you ‘anchored’ it near our kingdom?” Otabek repeated, voice mild, and Yuuri winced.

“Your highness, in our defense, they were drifting in our direction _anyway_. They would have come up on the rocks whether we got involved or not. This way the ship remains unsunk and in one piece, and a majority of the human sailors survived, so their corpses won’t pollute our water either.” Yuuri said quickly, and Otabek’s gaze slowly shifted to him.

“Katsuki,” he said, and Yuuri straightened immediately, recognizing the tone from his days in training, “humans carry tales.” _It might have been best to let them die,_ was what went unsaid, and Yuuri stiffened.

“Your highness,” he ground out, and cut himself off when Victor got a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Otabek,” he said, and Yuuri jerked around to stare at him, “The only thing they’ll carry tales of are of haunting music in the night, and of rocks that loomed up at them out of the dark. There are enough stories of sirens in the human world, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind taking credit for this too.”

Otabek stared back at them both with narrow eyes, then leaned back in his seat. Yuuri was distantly relieved the Queen had chosen to meet them in his study, this meeting would have been a lot more nerve-wracking if it had taken place in the throne room.

“Very well,” Otabek said finally. “Katsuki was already listed as a privateer, I suppose this would come under his bailiwick.”

“My Yuuri’s a _privateer_?” Victor gasped, at the same time the Yuuri groaned, and covered his face with his hands.

“That was only when I was still working with Phichit and Sueng-Gil, your highness. I’ve been in solo salvage for a long time now.”

Otabek stared at him silently, and Yuuri didn’t need to hear anything said to know that the Queen was laughing at him. A lot.

Victor just looked about as bright and gleeful as he had earlier, damnit. And something about that innocent delight made Yuuri want to do all the terrible things that he knew Victor was imaginkng.

Chasing adventures, was it. Fine. _Fine._

“Fine,” Yuuri said out loud, scowling at the Queen, and quickly lifting his arms to steady Victor’s weight when the older merman threw himself at Yuuri. “I’ll do it. I’m in.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the ones who came in to tell me that you’d commandeered a human ship.” Otabek said blandly, and Yuuri just stared back at him with an equally blank expression on his face.

“I wonder when the next storm’s going to come in,” Victor wondered out loud, and Yuuri nearly keeled over in shock.

The Queen? Just laughed at them both. Out loud, this time.

Yuuri’s _life._ Honestly.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a larger universe, where all the characters are different kinds of mermaids, following the pattern of the ones mentioned on this list: **[Here](https://lolalittlebub.tumblr.com/post/163843212538/im-a-seahorse-trainer-edit-disclaimer-this)**.
> 
> It's long been fondly referred to as my YOI Mermaid Pirates AU, and was originally prompted by the very dear **Lemon_Dropz** , who is a good friend of mine and a partner in crime who cheerfully dove into YOI at my side. Here's a link to the conversation that inspired this 'verse: **[Here](https://adelmortescryche.tumblr.com/post/167548263449/so-im-posting-this-in-advance-so-you-guys-can)**
> 
> Hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it! Also, Keep in mind that Yuuri's side of the story is the _shorter_ one. I'll be posting Victor's side of things in a later update.
> 
> **Please consider dropping kudos and comments!** I've slowed down in my responses, but you will get them. I'd love to chat about what you think about this crazy little 'verse, and Yuuri and Victor in it.
> 
> \---
> 
> For anyone interested, the next new AO3 post from me will be: one of my backlogged fills for YOIFantasyWeek - featuring a Phoenix!Yuuri.
> 
> You can find me **[@adelmortescryche](https://adelmortescryche.tumblr.com/)** \- come by and say hi! I don't bite.


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